elbows with her eyes out on stalks to try to see what the picture was of. She turned away and hurried into the cubbyhole behind the curtain and sat down at the desk there and made herself take three or four deep breaths. She had thrust the photo back into the envelope-was it really her?-and though she tried to she could not bring herself to look at it again. She had gone white first, but now she could feel herself turn bright red with shame. How could he, the dirty brute! It was as if a bucket of slops had been flung into her face. Even the things her Da used to do to her when she was little seemed not as bad to her now as the way Kreutz had betrayed her.
Leslie only laughed, of course, and held the photo at arm's length and pretended to study it as if it was an old-master painting or something, shutting one eye and tilting his head first to one side and then the other. 'He definitely has a flair, old Kreutzer,' he said. 'He should take it up professionally.' He grinned. 'Photography, I mean.' They were in the room in Percy Place, and he was lying on his back on the bed with his jacket still on and one leg flexed and a skinny ankle propped on a knee. There was a summer storm, and the wind was blowing rain in sheets diagonally across the light from the street-lamps. She had bought cheese and a Vienna roll and a bottle of Liebfraumilch for their supper. Leslie was still chuckling. She said it was not funny, and asked if there was nothing he would not laugh at. Could he not understand how ashamed it made her, to see herself like that, with her dress up round her and her legs all over the place and every bit of her on show? 'He's made you look quite the doll, I think,' Leslie said. 'Quite the pinup.'
She said she did not look anything of the kind, and that it was only what it was, a dirty picture.
'Oh, I don't know,' he said slyly. 'I'm sure I could find some connoisseur who'd pay a pretty penny for a framed copy of this.'
'Don't you even think about it, Leslie White,' she cried.
She knew he was joking about selling it, but even so the very idea made her go hot all over. When she was handing him his glass of wine she could not help glimpsing the photo again, where he was holding it up to the light to study it, and she shivered. Strangely, the worst part of it for her, though she did not say so, was the fact that in the photos her eyes were shut. It made her look like a corpse.
'What was it he gave you, I wonder,' Leslie said. 'Must have been something pretty good, for you to stay knocked out while he was setting up this little scene.' He threw her an impish look, the sharp little tip of his tongue showing. 'You're sure you weren't just pretending?'
She did not deign to answer him. The whole thing was disgusting, and yet somewhere inside her, deep, deep down inside her, a small flame flared at the thought of herself sprawled unconscious there on that sofa, on the red blanket, and Kreutz, with the camera round his neck, leaning over her and pulling up her dress and taking off her knickers and parting her knees… Leslie was watching her. He always knew what was going on in her mind. He laid the photograph flat on his chest and reached out a hand to her. 'Come here,' he said softly. She wanted to say no, that she was too upset, that she felt dirty and ashamed. But in the end, of course, she could not resist him. As he undid the buttons of her dress he hummed under his breath, as he always did, as if she were a job of work he was about to get busy on.
'I want that photo,' she said.
'Mmm?'
'I'm going to tear it up. I'm going to burn it.'
'He'll have copies. He'll have a negative.'
'You could get them from him. Will you do that, for me? Get them and burn them, burn them all?'
'Mmm.'
HE THOUGHT IT WAS FUNNY THAT KREUTZ WOULD DARE TO TRY TO blackmail him-why else had he sent the nudie photo of D.?-and would have dismissed the whole thing if D. had not kept on at him so. In the end, to shut her up, he had said that he would go round in the morning and call on Kreutz and give him a talking to. He had not expected to keep his promise, yet early the next day-it was early for him, anyway-he found himself bowling up Adelaide Road in the Riley. The storm of the night before had blown itself out, and the sun was shining, and the smell of rain drying on the pavements and the look of the rinsed trees all in full leaf cheered him up. He had stopped at a postbox on Fitzwilliam Square and dropped in the re-sealed envelope with a forwarding address on it, and a girl in a white blouse going past had given him a hot look. He drove on, whistling through his teeth and smiling to himself, with the wind ruffling his long hair.
At Kreutz's place he parked at the curb and went through the iron gate and hammered on the door and waited. When paying a call such as this one was likely to be, a fist on the wood and plenty of noise, he considered, was a better way of announcing his arrival than merely pressing the bell; it put the wind up those indoors and at the same time got his own adrenaline going. He thumped on the panels again, but still no one came. He retraced his steps to the gate and glanced up and down the street-it was empty, at this hour in the middle of a sunny summer morning-then went back to the door and took from a zipped pocket of his wallet a gadget made of toughened, tensile wire, intricately bent. It looked as harmless as a hairpin. He inserted the business end of it into the keyhole and turned it delicately this way and that, thinking with idle satisfaction how wise he had been to bone up on so many useful skills when he was young, and presently he felt, with almost a sensual satisfaction, the oiled yet resistant shift and slide of the engaged tumblers as they gave way and turned. He pushed the door open hardly more than a hand's width and stepped sideways smartly into the hall and stood listening, holding his breath. He liked breaking and entering; it gave him a real thrill. Then his heart did a bounce and he almost shouted out in fright. Kreutz was standing motionless in the shadows at the end of the hall, looking at him.
He had never really understood Kreutz. Not that he expected to-wogs were different, in all sorts of ways-or cared to, for that matter. There was something in the way the fellow had of moving, though, or of not moving, more like, that he found uncanny. And quiet, too, he was always very quiet. It was not just that he said little and moved lithely; no, his kind of quiet was more a way of not being there-of being there, that is, and, at the same time, not. Inscrutable, that was it-or was that Japs? Anyway, Kreutz was a man it was hard to scrute, if there was such a word. He was barefoot today, and wore a collarless tunic of dark-red silk buttoned to the neck and some sort of baggy Ali Baba trousers or pajama bottoms that seemed to be made of silk too. To cover his initial shock Leslie laughed and said: 'Jesus, Doc, the way you're standing there I thought someone'd had you done in and stuffed. And why didn't you answer my knock?'
Kreutz seemed to ponder the question seriously, then asked: 'What do you want?'
Leslie sighed, shaking his head in a show of regretful sorrow. 'I ask you, Doc, is that any way to greet an old pal? Where's your warmth? Where's your hospitality? Why don't you invite me in to share a pot of your special tea? Why don't you do that, eh?'
The Doctor seemed to be pondering again. Leslie wondered if he was thinking of putting up a fight. That would be a laugh, if he tried it. But he would not, of course, being a Buddhist or whatever he was. Leslie was aware of a faint regret. He had that tickle in the palms of his hands that he knew of old, the tickle of wanting to hit something or someone, provided the someone or something, a woman, preferably, could be counted on not to hit back, or not seriously, anyway. And Kreutz was as good as a woman, in that regard. Without a word now he turned on his bare, horny-rimmed heel and walked into the living room. Leslie followed, and stopped in the doorway and leaned against the jamb in a negligent pose with his hands in his pockets and his ankles crossed. He looked down at his shoes, admiring them absently: brown loafers with tassels, old but good. Kate always made fun of the way he dressed, saying he looked like a successful spiv. 'Instead of,' he would say, with one of his laughs, 'an unsuccessful one, which is what you think I really am.' And then the fight would start. She was a good fighter, was Kate. In the early days their rows had always ended in bed; not anymore. He waggled the toes of his right foot inside the shoe. Good old Kate.
'What do you want?' Kreutz asked again, bringing him out of his reverie.
'I told you-nice cup of tea.' The room was brightly, almost garishly, lit by a great panel of sunlight slanting down through the window from above the roof of the hospital opposite. Leslie could see how worried Kreutz was by the way he was standing, his arms rigid at his sides and his fingers jiggling and the whites of his eyes flashing. Well, good; he should be worried. 'Go and put the kettle on,' Leslie said.
